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DebunkedThe PolygraphThe instrument popularly called a lie detector, which records breathing, blood pressure, pulse and skin conductance dur…

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The library

Capsules

1,028 capsules, each one classified by the strength of its evidence.

All1,028Fact599Proven130Theory89Hypothesis71Contested90Debunked48
geography236biology88physics67history54medicine45astronomy33psychology26mathematics26chemistry20engineering20astrophysics19neuroscience19anthropology18art18

Trending now

Most recent activity

Factbiology

Horse

The horse, Equus ferus caballus, is a large grazing mammal domesticated on the Eurasian steppe and, for roughly four thousand years, the fastest way a human being could travel…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factgeography

Portage la Prairie

Portage la Prairie is a city in central Manitoba on the Assiniboine River, about eighty kilometres west of Winnipeg, with 13,270 residents at the 2021 census. Its name records…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Facteconomics

Insurance

The transfer of risk from an individual to a pool in exchange for a payment. It works because large numbers behave predictably even when individuals do not, and its two persistent…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Fact

Browse all

Showing 341 to 360 of 1,028

NewestMost votedA to Z
astrobiology
Hypothesis

The Alkaline Vent Hypothesis

The proposal that life began in alkaline hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, where mineral chimneys provided compartments and a natural proton…

byCapsule
media studies

Radio

Communication using electromagnetic waves without a conductor between sender and receiver. It was the first medium to reach a mass audience simultaneously, and it remains the…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Factbiology

Sea Turtle

Sea turtles are marine reptiles of the superfamily Chelonioidea, seven living species that have been in the oceans for more than a hundred million years. They breathe air,…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factgeography

Selkirk

Selkirk is a city on the Red River about twenty-two kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, with 10,504 residents at the 2021 census. It came close to being the site of the…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Fact· Empirical

Portage la Prairie

Portage la Prairie is a city in central Manitoba on the Assiniboine River, about eighty kilometres west of Winnipeg, with 13,270 residents at the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 7, 2026
Fact

Insurance

The transfer of risk from an individual to a pool in exchange for a payment. It works because large numbers behave predictably even when individuals…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 5, 2026

Also new

More from the last few days

geography
Fact· Empirical

Flin Flon

Flin Flon is a mining city on the Manitoba and Saskatchewan boundary, about 630 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, built directly on the rock of the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
nutrition
Fact

Salt

Sodium chloride. It is physiologically essential, it was the only reliable food preservative for most of history, and its scarcity relative to demand…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Fact

Surgery

Treatment by physical intervention in the body. Surgery was limited for millennia not by knowledge of anatomy but by three specific obstacles, and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Komodo Dragon

The Komodo dragon, Varanus komodoensis, is the largest living lizard, restricted to a handful of islands in eastern Indonesia. It grows to around…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Ant

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae, with over 14,000 described species and an estimated global population around twenty quadrillion…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
economics
Fact

Accounting

The systematic recording and reporting of financial activity. Double-entry bookkeeping is among the more consequential inventions in the history of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Albatross

Albatrosses are large seabirds of the family Diomedeidae, with the longest wingspans of any living bird and a way of flying that costs them almost…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
agriculture
Fact

Livestock

Domesticated animals kept for food, fibre, labour and other products. Livestock made agriculture viable on land that grows no crops, and they are now…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

On this day

A birth or event with an anniversary today

history
Fact· Empirical

Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is a colossal copper statue on an island in New York Harbor, one of the most famous monuments in the United States and a…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Settled science

Verified facts and proven results

See all
astronomy
Fact· Empirical

The Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the brightest object in our night sky. Large in proportion to its planet and close enough to study…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is one of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth: an immense gorge carved by the Colorado River through the high plateau of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
chemistry
Fact

Water (H₂O)

Water is a chemical compound with the formula H₂O, consisting of two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to one oxygen atom. Its bent molecular geometry…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
agriculture
Fact

Nitrogen Cycling in Prairie Soils of the Canadian Prairies

Nitrogen cycling in Prairie soils is a well-documented biological and chemical process that determines agricultural productivity across Manitoba,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the molecule that carries the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning, and reproduction of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Fact· Empirical

Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is not a single wall but a vast, discontinuous system of fortifications, walls, watchtowers, garrisons, and beacon towers,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Domestic Cat

The domestic cat, Felis catus, is the most numerous small carnivore on Earth, with something over six hundred million individuals. It is also barely…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Fact· Historical

French Revolution

The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of radical political and social upheaval in France that ended the Bourbon monarchy, abolished feudal…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth, a vast sea of green covering some 5.5 million square kilometres across nine South…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Penguin

Penguins are flightless seabirds of the southern hemisphere, around eighteen species, which gave up flight in the air for flight underwater. They are…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Great White Shark

The great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, is the largest predatory fish, reaching about six metres. It is warm-blooded in a limited and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
agriculture
Fact

Traditional Yoruba Agricultural Practices in Southwestern Nigeria

The Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria developed sophisticated agricultural systems over centuries that integrated intercropping, seasonal…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Open questions

Hypotheses under investigation and ideas still debated

See all
astronomy
Contested

The Origin of the Moon

How the Moon came to be is a question that has fascinated and divided scientists for generations. While one explanation is now favoured, important…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
philosophy
Contested

Free Will

Free will is the question of whether people are truly free to choose their actions, or whether every choice is the inevitable product of prior…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Hypothesis

Wormholes

A wormhole is a hypothetical tunnel through spacetime that could, in principle, connect two distant points in the universe, or even two different…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
earth science
Contested

What Killed the Dinosaurs

Around sixty six million years ago, the dinosaurs and many other forms of life suddenly vanished in one of the great mass extinctions in Earth's…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
earth science
Contested

What Causes the Ice Ages

Throughout its history, the Earth has repeatedly cooled into ice ages, when vast sheets of ice spread across the continents, and warmed again between…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
psychology
Hypothesis

Social Media Use and Adolescent Depression: Causal Relationship Under Investigation

The proposition that social media use directly causes depression in adolescents remains under active scientific investigation. While correlational…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
earth science
Hypothesis

The Gaia Hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis proposes that life and its physical environment on Earth form a single, self regulating system that keeps the planet suitable for…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Contested

The Anthropic Principle

The anthropic principle concerns the striking observation that the universe appears remarkably fine tuned for the existence of life. Many of the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Hypothesis

The Dyson Sphere

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that an extremely advanced civilization might build around a star to capture a large share of its…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Contested

The Fermi Paradox

The Fermi paradox is the puzzling contrast between the high apparent likelihood that alien civilizations exist somewhere in our vast galaxy and the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Contested

Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is the most successful physical theory ever devised, predicting the behavior of atoms, light, and subatomic particles with…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Hypothesis

The Rare Earth Hypothesis

The Rare Earth hypothesis proposes that complex, multicellular life, of the kind found on Earth, is extremely rare in the universe, because it…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Debunked

Claims the evidence overturned

See all
geology
Debunked

The Expanding Earth

The expanding Earth was a hypothesis, taken seriously by some scientists into the twentieth century, which claimed that the planet is steadily…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Debunked

The Caloric Theory

The caloric theory was an explanation of heat, widely accepted into the early nineteenth century, which held that heat is an invisible, weightless…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Debunked

Perpetual Motion

Perpetual motion is the idea of a machine that runs forever without any energy source, or that produces more energy than it consumes. Inventors have…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
science
Debunked

Cold Fusion at Room Temperature

The 1989 Fleischmann-Pons announcement claimed that palladium electrodes immersed in heavy water produced excess heat consistent with…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
nutrition
Debunked

Breakfast as the Most Important Meal

The claim that eating breakfast is necessary for health and weight control, and that skipping it causes weight gain. The phrase was popularised by…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Debunked

Miasma Theory

Miasma theory was the belief that diseases such as cholera and the plague were caused by "bad air," a poisonous vapor thought to rise from rotting…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Debunked

The Martian Canals

The Martian canals were a network of fine, straight lines that some astronomers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed they…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrophysics
Debunked

The Steady State Theory

The steady state theory was a model of the universe, popular in the mid twentieth century, which held that the universe has always looked roughly the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
neuroscience
Debunked

Phrenology

Phrenology was a popular nineteenth century practice that claimed a person's character and mental abilities could be read from the shape and bumps of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
architecture
Debunked

The Golden Ratio in Art and Architecture

The golden ratio is a real and interesting number. The claim that it governs the Parthenon, the Great Pyramid, the Mona Lisa and the proportions of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geology
Debunked

The Hollow Earth

The hollow Earth was the idea that our planet is not solid but hollow, perhaps containing a habitable inner world, or even inner suns and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Debunked

Vitalism

Vitalism was the long held belief that living things contain a special, non physical "vital force" or "life energy" that animates them and that…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Theories explained

Well substantiated explanations of how things work

See all
medicine
Theory· Scientific

Germ Theory of Disease

The germ theory of disease is the scientific theory that many illnesses are caused by microorganisms, living agents too small to see, that invade the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Theory

Endosymbiotic Theory

Endosymbiotic theory explains the origin of the complex cells that make up plants, animals, fungi, and other higher organisms. It proposes that key…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Theory· Scientific

The Big Bang

The Big Bang is the prevailing cosmological theory of how the universe began. It holds that the universe started about 13.8 billion years ago in an…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Theory

Cell Theory

Cell theory is one of the foundational ideas of biology. It holds that all living things are made of cells, that the cell is the basic unit of life,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that describes the behaviour of matter and energy at the smallest scales, those of atoms and subatomic…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Aerodynamics: How Flight Works

Aerodynamics is the study of how air flows around objects and the forces this creates. It is the science that explains how aircraft fly, how cars and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Theory

Set Theory

Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies collections of objects, called sets. Though it begins with an idea as simple as grouping things…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics is the branch of physics concerned with heat, energy, and work, and how they transform from one form to another. Its laws are among…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
earth science
Theory

The Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is the process by which certain gases in a planet's atmosphere trap heat, keeping the surface warmer than it would otherwise…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Optics

Optics is the branch of physics that studies light: how it travels, how it interacts with matter, and how it can be controlled with lenses and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Theory

Graph Theory

Graph theory is the branch of mathematics that studies networks of connected objects. A graph is simply a collection of points, called vertices,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Dark Matter: The Leading Theoretical Framework for Missing Mass in the Universe

Dark matter is the leading theoretical framework proposed to explain gravitational effects observed in galaxies and galaxy clusters that cannot be…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
0 votes0 reviews
molecular biology
Hypothesis

The RNA World Hypothesis

The proposal that early life used RNA for both heredity and catalysis, before DNA and proteins divided those jobs between them. It solves a genuine…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
computer science
Proven

Error-Correcting Codes

Adding structured redundancy to a message so that errors introduced in storage or transmission can be detected and repaired without asking for a…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Proven

Semmelweis and Handwashing

A Hungarian obstetrician worked out in 1847 that doctors were killing women in childbirth by carrying something on their hands from the dissection…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
chemistry
Proven

Spectroscopy

Every element absorbs and emits light at a unique set of wavelengths. Reading those wavelengths identifies what something is made of without touching…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Proven

The Expansion of the Universe

Distant galaxies recede from us, and the further away they are the faster they go. The observation established that the universe has a history rather…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Proven

Nuclear Fission

Splitting a heavy nucleus releases about a hundred million times more energy per atom than a chemical reaction. It was discovered by accident in…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Proven

Rutherford Scattering

Firing alpha particles at gold foil and finding that a few bounced back. The result destroyed the prevailing model of the atom, established that…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Proven

Osmosis

Water moves across a membrane from where solutes are dilute to where they are concentrated. It requires no pump and no energy input, it generates…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biochemistry
Proven

Enzyme Catalysis

Enzymes speed up chemical reactions by factors that reach ten to the power of seventeen, at body temperature and neutral pH, without being consumed.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Proven

The Laser

A device that produces light in which every wave is in step, travelling in one direction at one wavelength. It was built in 1960 with no application…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrobiology
Hypothesis

The Zoo Hypothesis

The proposal that extraterrestrial civilisations exist, know we are here, and are deliberately not making contact. It is among the oldest proposed…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
anthropology
Hypothesis

The Self-Domestication Hypothesis

The proposal that humans domesticated themselves, selecting over many generations against aggression and for tolerance, and that this produced our…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrophysics
Hypothesis

Modified Newtonian Dynamics

Galaxies rotate faster at their edges than the visible matter can explain. The standard answer is that unseen dark matter supplies the extra gravity.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
anthropology
Hypothesis

The Endurance Running Hypothesis

The proposal that humans evolved to run long distances, and that running down prey over hours in the heat was how our ancestors hunted before…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
psychology
Hypothesis

The Bicameral Mind

Julian Jaynes proposed in 1976 that people three thousand years ago were not conscious in the way we are, that they experienced their own thoughts as…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrobiology
Hypothesis

The Great Filter

If the universe should be full of civilisations and appears empty, something must be preventing them. Robin Hanson's proposal is that at least one…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geology
Hypothesis

The Toba Catastrophe Hypothesis

The proposal that a supervolcanic eruption in Sumatra about 74,000 years ago caused a volcanic winter that nearly exterminated the human species,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
anthropology
Hypothesis

The Obstetrical Dilemma

The proposal that human childbirth is difficult because walking upright narrowed the pelvis while brains grew larger, leaving birth as a compromise…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Hypothesis

The Serotonin Hypothesis of Depression

The proposal that depression is caused by low serotonin, and that antidepressants work by correcting it. The popular version of this claim is not…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
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